Which SQL Server 2008 version to be used - sql-server

I need to install SQL Server 2008 on the server. I wanted to know which edition of SQL Server 2008 would scale for the usage of 350+users. Can you please share your views to select on which would be more appropriate?
SQL Server 2008 Datacenter
SQL Server 2008 Enterprise (32/64bit)
SQL Server 2008 Standard
SQL Server 2008 Developer
SQL Server 2008 Workgroup
Thanks,

With only user counts to go on and no idea how well the DB is architected AND how well written/designed the software application is for scalability makes this question very hard to say whether you will have scalability problems. Scalability of SQL Server has been well tested but often it is not SQL Server's fault that something is scaling badly. It is often a failing of the application code or a poor DB design.
However, with what you have given us information wise.....
Options 1-3 should be fine in general for that many users.
Option 4 is only meant to be on a developers workstation.
Option 5 is meant for small teams / users.

I'd say any of 1, 2 or 3 will work fine. Which of those you choose is going to depend on what type of application you are developing and what features you will be using. The Datacenter version is probably overkill, so it's probably going to come down to whether you need the features that Enterprise offers over Standard.
Probably the most significant difference is the CPU support - Standard only supports 4 CPUs. You can see a detailed comparison here

Generally I think the same as the tow above but it depends also from many various factors.

Related

SQL Source Control and SQL Express "Support"

Red Gate's SQL Source Control product documentation (http://documentation.red-gate.com/display/SOC3/Requirements) states:
SQL Source Control doesn't support SQL Server 2000, SQL Express, SQL Azure or SSMS Express
I have been evaluating their product and assumed based off this statement that "doesn't support" meant "will not work". However, I have made admittedly trivial changes to a central SQL Server Standard Edition database FROM a local SQL Express edition installation.
SQL Server edition differences notwithstanding - I am wondering what pitfalls this kind of architecture would have, again, strictly from a SQL Source Control perspective. We are looking for a way to bridge the gap between our planned upgrade to SQL Server 2012 from 2008 R2, and do not want to purchase 2008 dev edition licenses knowing that we have months until we start on our upgrade path.
Is anyone implementing a dedicated database development model with SQL Express on developer machines?
I'm a pre-sales engineer for Redgate. We use SQL Express for most of the machines that we use in our own training courses for the same reason - licencing.
While it will probably work fine we don't officially support Express. The SQL Server editions that we say we support are the ones we test against. Given the number of SQL Server editions out there we only test against the ones we list on our website as officially supported. Hence we try to make it clear if you are using an edition that we do not test against.
However, assuming your dev databases are disposable and that your source of truth is your source code - which can be rolled back - and on the proviso that you understand our disclaimer that it is not officially supported, I'd unofficially say that it will probably work well enough.
Sorry for not answering this a year ago. I've just started making an effort to be more pro-active on Stack!

SQL Server 2005 v 2008 for a medium volume classic asp site

I'm running a classic asp app that's migrating to a .NET 4.0 app; it mostly does CRUD and some reporting (currently not via Reporting Services). I don't do many other kinds of remote jobs - the most I do is a simple replication of one table to another on the same server.
Is it worth going to 2008 given this scenario?
Yes.
Auditing comes with 2008 out of the box.
SQL 2008 provides the ability to limit the resources of queries.
Add CPU's on the fly.
Intellisense. Mentioned already.
Ability to compress data and use less disk space.
Declare and set a variables inline.
Whether it is worth the upgrade dependes on what you value.
I would move to 2008 just to get the new features, bug fixes, and tools.
2008 is easier to develop in (intellisense). It also makes it easier to use things like Reporting Services, Analysis Services, and Integration Services.
2005 is totally fine for the scenario you've got, it's still a premium quality server.
If you're starting fresh and have options - you might also want to consider:
End of Mainstream Support for SQL Server 2005 and End of Service Pack Support for SQL Server 2008 SP1
SQL Server 2005 is officially "end of support" as of April 2011. Personally, I wouldn't pick that version anymore, over 2008 or 2008 R2.
I guess I'm in the minority on this one. IMO, given what little you have told us, the reason for going up to 2008 would be a smooth upgrade path.
If you do not need data compression ( only in the Enterprise version BTW ), or do not need intellisense since you are using something else ( e.g. Visual Studio ) to build your queries or do not need adding CPUs on the fly ( because a quick reboot is acceptable ) then SQL 2008 probably will not provide enough benefit to justify the additional cost (again depending on your licensing situation). At some point, 2005 will become "ancient" technology (probably Nov 2011 when SQL Server 2011 comes out) and that might make things difficult from a feature set/support standpoint for developers. If you can wait until November until Denali is supposed to be released, then I would do that.
SQL Server 2005
is 6 years old
there are 2 later versions
it's going out of support
Go with SQL Server 2008 of course.

What to consider when getting started with SQL Server?

I've got experience with MySQL, DB2, and Oracle, but aside from writing a few queries, I've never used SQL Server.
My question is a three parter:
1) For a developer, what are some good "free" client tools to look at, and why (by "free" I mean open source, freeware, or the tools that come with SQL Server itself)?
2) I plan to run Developer or Express Edition on my workstation for development, and either Standard or Enterprise Edition in the testing and production environments. What methods exist if any for transferring data between different servers and the different editions?
3) Are there any common pitfalls that someone like me (who is used to the other database systems that I mentioned) might encountered during development?
TIA
SQL Server Express with tools.
All editions have the same SQL language features and code is 100% portable between them. There are 3rd party tools to synch changes, but moving entire DBs is easy using inbuilt tools.
Nah. The problem with databases is SQL and set theory, not the choice of RDBMS. If you understand databases/SQL you'll be OK.
SQL Server Management Studio which comes with SQL Server (any editions), or you can download it separately. SQL Server Profiler which doesn't come with Express.
Management studio has tools for backup/restore database. You can also consider detach/attach method to synchronize db .
It's hard to say. But if you had Mysql experience you will be pleasantly surprised by SQL Server.
UPDATE
There are so many things that each DB vendor implements differently that it's really hard to focus on some of them. One thing I was not used before is that SQL Server doesn't let unique columns to have more than 1 NULL value(there is a workaround though)

Question about Reporting and Data Warehousing Software bundled with SQL Server 2005

We currently use SQL Server 2005 Enterprise for our fairly large application, that has its roots in pre SQL Server 7.0. The tables are normalized and designed mainly for the application. The developers for the most part have the legacy SQL Server mindset. Only using the part of TSQL that existed back in 7.0, not using any of the new features of tsql or that are bundled with 2005.
We're currently trying to build on demand reports using some crappy third party software, and will eventually try to build a data warehouse using more of the same crappy third party software (name removed to protect the guilty, don't ask I will not tell). The rationale for this was that we didn't want to spend more money to buy this additional software from Microsoft (this was not my decision, I had no input, but is my problem now). But from what I can tell is that Enterprise includes all of these tools, or am I missing something?
What comes bundled with SQL Server 2005 Enterprise as far as reporting and data warehousing? Will we need to purchase anything else? is there actually anything else that can be purchased from Microsoft in this regard?
Well, first - I would go with 2008 R2 for that regard, much better for reporting.
DAta warehousing in 2005 is just that. 2008 did introduce optimizatoins for star schemata in the query optimizer.
2005 I think has report services that you can use - though they got a LOT better with 2008 and 2008 R2 (graphs etc.)
Besides that think getting rid of SQL for analysis - the data warehouse should get loaded into cubes in SQL Server Analysis Services and run the reports against those.
All that (reporting services, analysis services) is part of the enterprise edition you use. There is hardly any use for something else unless you have unusual needs.
Enterprise edition contains Reporting Services that you can install that. It is a powerful service for reporting.
If you find you're unhappy with Reporting Services (seems to not work well for about 35% of the people who try it), please take a look at Windward Reports. With that said, I hope it does work well for you as that is your least expensive and quickest route forward.

Advantages and disadvantages between sql 2005 and sql 2008?

Exact duplicate:
Advantages of MS SQL Server 2008 over MS SQL Server 2005?
i am a sql developer and i use sql 2005. i want to now to pass to 2008 but i am a little affraid. can anyone gives me some advices about this. should i still continue using sql 2005 or is better pass all my projects to 2008 due to better performace?
Who is going to use your projects; if they are going to customers with existing SQL Licenses then 2005 might be the way to go; assuming they are running 2005. SQL 2005 databases will work on 2008; though if you use some of the new language features in 2008 then the SQL2008 databases wont be backwards compatible to 2005.
If you are controlling where they are going to be deployed; some of the new features in sql 2008 might be of interest; better full text search, improved Analysis services, reporting services and some language tweaks. If you are managing the servers; your admins will likely appreciate the new management features in 2008.
I moved to 2008 because I am heavy into SSIS and have large databases meaning: The backup compression and increased concurrent processes in SSIS for 2008 make it worth it for me.
I moved 6 projects from 2005 to 2008 without any problems except reporting services. To me the biggest benefit is the SQL Management Studio enhancements like auto complete and change history.
The only reason I did upgrade was because I work in education and Microsoft is very gracious on licensing.
In general, unless you hear that it is a disaster, I think you should strive to use the most recent release at the earliest opportunity. The advances in server functionality and the tool set will usually offset the time it takes you to learn the new features. All software is built with planned obsolescence in mind, so you will eventually need to migrate to newer technology. If you make a habit of migrating your systems to the latest technology, you will find that the migrations become relatively painless.
One of the benefits of SQLServer 2008 with respect to SSIS is that it includes very fast bulk connectors for Oracle and Teradata (well, the development and enterprise versions do).
So if you need to move data between SQLServer 2008 and those databases you get this for no additional cost.
See Microsoft Connectors for Oracle and Teradata by Attunity
Another major benefit in SQLServer 2008 is the new Change Data Capture (CDC) functionality which means you can build your application in any way you like and then if at later time you are interested in starting some processing when table X changed, you can turn on CDC for that table and get a change table that contains all the changes to table X with minimal overhead. Ben Hall did a useful post on this.
I think SQL 2008 has somewhat advantage in compare to sql 2005
New data types(date,time,files stream)
2.Backup compressin
3.Data compression
4.policy based management.
If anyone know better answer kindly inform

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